Washington: Billowing smoke from wildfires was so thick over the summer that it blocked out mountain views in the western United States and prompted health warnings for vulnerable people – even those far from the deadly blazes – to stay indoors. But it was the drift of the worsening air as far east as New York and Washington D.C. that may have been the spark lawmakers needed to advance major spending packages now moving on Capitol Hill that aim to address the threat, said U.S. Sen. Michael Bennet.
I hate to say it, but this year smoke finally made it to the East Coast – and I think people on the East Coast started to grasp the urgency of the situation, Bennet, a Democrat from Colorado, told the Thomson Reuters Foundation. Beyond paid leave and healthcare, House Democratsâ $1.75 trillion social spending package moving through Congress includes about $27 billion for forestry programs, with an eye on curbing the climate-fueled blazes ravaging the western U.S.
The funding is down from $40 billion in an earlier version, as Democrats scramble to scale back a more expansive $3.5 trillion draft package to accommodate cost-minded members. Advocates, though, say even the lower amount – combined with wildfire funding in President Joe Biden’s $1 trillion-plus infrastructure package – represents a historic step forward.
It is still the biggest forest climate investment in U.S. history â itâs not even close, said Jad Daley, president and CEO of American Forests, a nonprofit group. Forests held up much better than a lot of other things in the bill, he said. They were recognized as uniquely effective in addressing both climate mitigation and climate adaptation and resilience.
Forests are one of the best natural carbon sinksâ meaning they pull climate-changing carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere as they grow and store it. That means proper forest conservation and restoration efforts â as well as prescribed burns to reduce the risk of wildfires that have eaten up millions of acres of land this year â are critical in the battle to curb global warming.
Bennet estimated that costs for wildfire mitigation measures run about $1,500 per acre – far lower than the $50,000 per acre to fight fires that have already started. But in the absence of federal funding, communities have had to spend money that they shouldnât have had to spend doing the forest restoration, he said.
More than half of the $27 billion in forestry funding included in the $1.75 trillion social spending bill, which the House aims to pass this week, would go toward hazardous fuels reduction projects. That’s things like clearing brush through prescribed burns or mechanical thinning so that when fires do occur they’re not as intense, said Haley Leslie-Bole, a research analyst with the World Resources Institute, a Washington-based think-tank.
It is expensive to go in and do that – but as Sen. Bennet said, itâs way more expensive to fight these catastrophic conflagrations, Leslie-Bole said. Federal firefighting costs for efforts by the U.S. Forest Service and Interior Department agencies to suppress fires have totaled close to $2 billion every year on average over the past decade, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.
In 2021, wildland fires have burned through more than 6.5 million acres in the United States as of early November, the agency said â about in line with the recent 10-year average. Still, the overall threat is spreading.
The prevalance of fire-prone days is expanding across parts of the western United States, including in some places, from Oklahoma to Nebraska, that may not expect them, according to an August study from Climate Central, a nonprofit group.